Zephine Humphrey and her Library (Dorset, 1908)
There is one department of the house ordering which I have so far ignored entirely, leaving it to a chapter by itself because of its importance. The significance of the boxes of books appealed to me at once, when we came across them in the midst of our first investigations.
I waited till all was in order first, the carpets laid, the empty bookcases ranged in place, even the curtains hung. Books, I take it, like quietness and decorum. Then one morning, when Jane sat down to sew and Aunt Susan to write letters, I repaired to the wood-shed where the boxes stood, my pulses beating as at the going forth to encounter one knows not what dear friend.
And yet I knew what one chief friend I hoped now at last to follow down in the midst of the company he had kept, and touch and hold securely. My scholar-uncle, whose library these books represented, died when I was a little child. I knew him scarcely at all in terms of time or sense, but there has never been any one in the two worlds whom I have loved better. It has been part of the serious business of my mature life to track his fleeing spirit, holding fast by every clue, acting on every hint, that so I may apprehend him at length and know him for that which I joyfully guess. Not an easy pursuit, take it all in all, when death and silence have intervened to help a soul already sufficiently fugitive in itself; I have often been sorely baffled. Whither is the sweet mocker away that he never will wait to let me catch up with him? Does he not know that we needs must love each other?
The portrait helped me wonderfully, turning up quite as a revelation among our things at Dorset. I had lived with it as a child, to be sure, but the eyes of youth are undiscerning; I had never realized what an excellent work it was. Aunt Susan and I unboxed it together, then we stood back and looked in silence. The grave and gentle young face of long ago smiled quietly out at us—blue eyes transfused with an inner light of wistfulness and humor, oddly sad and whimsical at a glance, a firm sweet mouth, and a dreaming forehead. Over the features played the touch, vanishing, elusive, that was life itself, fragile as a star-ray, persistent as the hills. My very uncle, caught, arrested, when he knew it not, when he would most have taken his leave, being most himself, fixed there for the world to love—what a tender and beautiful kind of joke! I wonder if the painter knew the fineness of his triumph, and if he chuckled to himself— "Ah-ha, there, trapped, thou fleeing one!" I should like to thank him for his great service, but he too has now taken advantage of death. We hung the picture—Aunt Susan and I— over one of the bookcases in the library, where we can most frequently be in its presence; and, when the afternoon sun strikes through the orchard window, the thoughtful face lights suddenly up and the blue eyes laugh outright.
With my uncle's books, as with his portrait, I had been long familiar. But here again I must plead the ignorance of youth. I remembered, indeed, that we owned the Waverley Novels and Lorna Doone, an illustrated Lives of the Saints adapted for Sunday beguilement, a Pilgrim's Progress, a Household Book of Poetry, and many tales of heterogeneous association; but, beyond this limited assurance, I had no knowledge of what might lie awaiting me in the boxes. It was with a double excitement that I fared forth on my task of unpacking. I was going to find my uncle because I was going to find dear mutual friends hand in hand with him who would help to make him known. Since the early days when I had last seen this library, I had come to believe that there is nothing in all the world quite so good as a good book.
The doors of the wood-shed stood wide to the sunny lawn at the edge of the orchard, the birds flew singing by. It was early June now, and the world's chalice was brimming. Even so brimmed at my feet the separate chalices of the lives of the best of men, waiting only for me to lift and quaff. What a day I had before me!
I began on the nearest box, at random, trusting my stars as usual. At once I discovered that the book-packer's method, whatever may be said for it from the point of view of expediency, respects not persons at all. As if one should settle a town by height—all six foot people in this street, all five foot nine in that—so these boxes had been filled according to size of volume, relevancy of subjectmatter being quite ignored. The result was somewhat bewildering to the investigating eye, but I am not sure that the confusion did not lend its own particular zest to the excitement of the occasion. All was surprise, when essays, novels, books of poetry, books of science lay side by side indiscriminately, and one could not possibly foretell what the next dive of the eager hand might bring forth.
My uncle surely was aware of what was going forward; he lent himself to the spirit game of hide-and-seek with his usual vanishing quickness. Almost caught, never held! Ah, come now, dear, it is no laughing matter! At first he encouraged me immensely, flattered me with unlooked-for hope of an instant union, came and sat on the box beside me and said, "See here, and here!" Emerson, Browning, Hazlitt, Thoreau, Lamb, Wordsworth—with one accord they sprang up and bade us join our hands and love each other always. It almost took my breath away. I was sure of him now. I held him, sitting down on the floor with his battered Emerson in my hand, reading after him. All my favorite passages he had marked; in the margin were comments written to which I cried Amen. I had him, I had him; he was here, waiting for me between the leaves of the book which we both loved. It was only because no meaner place was fit for the tarrying of his spirit that he had evaded me so long. I looked up, glowing, and my glance fell on a serried rank of books in an adjacent box; uniform, these, because one set—Prescott's histories! Well, it was funny to observe how flat my spirits fell. Even I thought it was funny, and smiled. As for my uncle, I heard his spirit laughter ring as clear as the song of the oriole in the orchard. I got up slowly, laying aside the kindly volumes whc had thought to make my way so easy, and went and examined the history books. A whole solid box of them, on my word! Prescott and Gibbon and Milman and Hume and all the dreary old fellows whom I have never been able to read. My uncle had read them; here were his marks and his comments running along the margins in his fine scholarly hand, denoting his thoughtful interest. But I—alas! —no, it was no use. I saw my beautiful, hunted spirit, so nearly encountered in Emerson's grove, retreating now along the broad way of a dusty highroad whither I might not follow, and I knew he was lost again.
The counter-check was useful in that it brought me down to the work immediately at hand. The morning was going, and the shelves in the library were a-gape. Accepting my failure—not forgetting, either, my first success—I gathered the books in armfuls and carried them through to the front of the house, assorting them and depositing them in piles on the library floor. My uncle flashed joyously out at me once from an old volume of Keats. That was a full-face encounter, be sure, a clear straight shining from eye to eye, convincing, penetrating. I averted my glance from the history pile for some time after that.
The task of classification and arrangement was by no means a simple one. I had not realized that there would be so many subtle considerations to be borne in mind. The great and generous souls with whom I was dealing presented no claims of any kind, but their very reticence put me on my mettle of honor to do my best by them.
To begin with, there was the broad division into the two rooms, north and south. The north room is the library proper. My uncle's picture hangs there, and there stand five of the big bookcases. The windows look out into the orchard, and the light is cool and shaded. A very fit room, take it all in all, for the grave presence of books. But the south room is attractive too. The sunlight streams in at its windows, and the green lawn with flaunting flower-beds offers a cheery outlook to the color-loving eye. To this latter room I consigned the French books with no hesitation, and also, after only some slight consideration, the books on art. But just here— in arranging the art bookcase—I made my first mistake. Ruskin is one of my chief favorites in the world of letters, one of my prophets, I may say. My uncle loves him too, and deigned to make Modern Painters a resting-point from which to look back and lure me on in my pursuit of him. Not for anything in the world would I have failed to meet the wishes of the great writer concerning his dwelling-place with us. I considered the matter carefully. Ruskin was a teacher, I decided, a teacher of no less a subject than life itself; he belonged among the philosophers and essayists, rank by rank with Emerson, Plato, Marcus Aurelius. Accordingly, I gave him a place of honor in the corner bookcase in the library, where the essayists stand. It is curious how you feel at once a person's state of mind. I knew that something was not quite right before I had even finished putting the volumes upon the shelf. It would be impious to say that Ruskin sulked; but at least he was not happy, something was on his mind. I pondered and deliberated, and at last it flashed upon me—I am sure I do not know how—that the great man thought he belonged, not in the essay bookcase at all, but at the head of the bookcase of art in the other room. The change was not a promotion in my eyes, but, since he would have it so, I obeyed, and at once the volumes fell into place with a happy air of authority; all was well with Ruskin.
With Carlyle also I had difficulties manifold and tedious. This fiery scribe goes clad with us most appropriately in a burning red; and, wherever I left him, he set up warfare with all sorts of harmless pink and magenta books of the minor poetry and novel order. His place was not quite ready for him in the essay bookcase; I did think he might have a little patience and trust me for his final disposal. But no, he would not wait a minute. No sooner had I rescued a shivering, livid pink novelette from his overbearing presence, and turned about some other task, than, out of the tail of my eye, I saw him at it again, vexing himself purple in the face over some salmon poetry. There was nothing for it finally but that I should drop everything else and put the fierce volumes where they belonged, on the shelf by the dark green Emerson. Immediately what a transformation! Ah, Emerson, friend of his soul! There were no more lurid glarings now, but an instant out-shining of genial light, warm, harmonious as you please, and, as with Ruskin a short time ago, so now all was well with Carlyle.
I was turning away from this happy consummation, when I caught a curious, whimsical protest proceeding from the upper shelf of the bookcase beside me. The tone was apologetic, laughing: i "Of course it's an interesting situation, and therefore I can stand it; but really you know—!"
It was Cervantes speaking, and he was glancing sideways, with comical, appealing despair, at a rigid volume of Jonathan Edwards which flanked him uncompromisingly. Would never have made any trouble about it, preserved his native complexion unchanged; but really—! It was in truth a delightful situation. I am afraid I prolonged it a little for the sake of my own enjoyment, glancing from one to the other of the two uncongenial neighbors, the one so stiff, the other so debonair, both so ready to be gone. Then I carried Jonathan Edwards away into another room, leaving a place which has since been filled by The Gentle Reader. - *: ,
My uncle made another of his altogether incalculable appearances in connection with this latter incident. Quite gravely he stood before me, as I was about to thrust the volume of sermons somewhat unthinkingly away, and bade me hold and beware. "Cervantes does all very well," he assured me; "you do right to consider him. But do not scorn Jonathan Edwards, my child. He was a great good man." I liked the note of authority in my uncle's voice, even though his admonition opened out new spirit-miles before me; and, with great respect, I found a place of rank and consideration for his stern old preacher friend.
It will be seen that I was trying to be very conscientious in this whole matter of dealing with my uncle's library, to remember always that it was his, not mine. One of my gravest problems was the appropriation of the bookcase of honor beneath his portrait.
"Aunt Susan," I asked, emerging for counsel from the elected solitude of my task, "in what department of the library did my uncle take most pride?"
Aunt Susan looked up from her writing, and considered a moment.
"The histories, I think, on the whole," she answered with an air of conviction.
Might I not have known this would be the reply? I smiled, to establish my appreciation of the jest in the eyes of all on-lookers; then I returned to the library and firmly arranged the histories, row on row, in that case which I coveted for the essayists. My uncle's eyes beamed into mine every time I looked up from my determined concession, and his face was more tender than whimsical; he was touched I think. As for the histories, I must say they made a fine show for themselves. Bound for the most part in reds and browns, leatherbacked, with gold tooling, they filled the bookcase impressively, and formed a fit setting of dignity for the thoughtful face above them. Were it not that I make a loyal distinction between love of books and backgammon-board appreciation, I should honor the histories. I do honor them for my uncle's sake. Perhaps some day I shall read them.
It is needless to say that all this work of arrangement occupied many days, days of a musing absorption and pleasure which I shall not soon forget. I did not hurry; I would not lose one happy experience. There was hardly an hour, half-hour, say, when I did not drop down on the floor with some newly-discovered dear book in my hand, and give myself over to the spell of the master there abiding. I often caught my uncle thus, fleeing through the pages, surprised on some much pondered paragraph where he had bemused himself, taking sudden flight on my coming, but leaving his trail blazed for me. I should have him yet, the mocker! I soon discovered that the two writers in whose books I was most certain of finding him were Emerson and Wordsworth, and I haunted their pages expectantly.What higher use can a book subserve than to be a rendezvous of souls?
When at last all was in order, every rearrangement made, and as perfect a harmony established as can prevail in such a diverse multitude, I stood and realized my riches, deeply gratified. There were some rare and valuable books here, books which my uncle's slender purse and thoughtful scholar's taste would hardly have let him buy, but which good friends had bestowed on him. Resplendent volumes of Lacroix's Middle Ages, a curious description of the Rosetta Stone, Moore's poems in an exquisite setting over which I fairly held my breath, fine collections of engravings, a black-letter Wycliffe Bible—excellent treasures, these, and others, filling the bookcase in the south room where Ruskin held happy sway. I admired them truly, knowing yet that it was not before them that my feet would pause oftenest in the days to come.
When I am banished to my desert island, it will probably be the poetry bookcase which I shall take with me. There are more than ten volumes here, to be sure, but I can never bring my mind to the ungracious supposition of meager designs on the part of bountiful Providence which the popular book-review fancy delights in. One hundred volumes is the last limitation which I can consent to tax heaven withal. The poetry books, from Shakespeare down, have my reasonable preference over all the others in the house. The highest of all human thinking is here, the very quintessence of life.
And yet again the floor, though worn before the poetry bookcase, will always have another spot more marred.
When I enter the library now, after an absence of any length, it is to the odd little corner bookcase where the essays stand that my eyes instinctively turn for greeting. All there, my hearties? Then all is well. The assortment here is the least creditable, from a book-collector's point of view, of any the house contains. Odd, ragged volumes, mismated, despoiled, vagabonds of the shelf, merry survivors of statelier times when the garments were at least stiff and new which now hang about them so recklessly, they look out into the room with a certain disreputable good-cheer which is quite irresistible. Their demoralization is completed by the fact that there is never a time when some two or three of them are not leaning confidingly across space to take advantage of the temporary absence of a next neighbor and have a chat with a next neighbor but one. Dear comrades! they pour me the wine of life—better, the golden sunlight—from the chalices of their names. Malory, Cervantes, Montaigne, Walton, Bunyan, Addison, Goldsmith, Lamb, Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, Holmes, Stevenson, Crothers, Henderson—is it not enough to name them over to feel the heart refreshed? There is hardly a doubt of the worth of life which their bookcase cannot settle.
The old house received the old books with its usual wise tranquillity. But their coming must have been an event far more stirring to it than the arrival of Aunt Susan and Jane and me. It had sheltered many people before, it knew them through and through; I suppose it had never in all its days seen a library like my uncle's. I like to muse on the perfect fitness of the intercourse thus established. How, in the dead of night, they must confer together, and in the long, cold winter when we go away and leave them! Doubtless, if the house were questioned as to its inhabitants, it would begin exultantly, " Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan," and one would have to wait a long time before hearing a word about Aunt Susan and Jane and me. But I think we should not resent this.
"Come, uncle," I said appealingly, when all was done and I sat down by the window; "come, meet me here among your books, there could be no better place. Come, live with me, and we will read all the day long together. Emerson, Wordsworth"
Here my glance, turning to seek my uncle's face, encountered the top row of history books, and I stopped suddenly. It was late in the afternoon, the sun was streaming down the orchard hill, a long ray stole through the library window, and my uncle's eyes laughed out. But he did not say me nay.
Excerpt from Humphrey, Zephine, Over Against Green Peak, Henry Holt and Company, 1909
I waited till all was in order first, the carpets laid, the empty bookcases ranged in place, even the curtains hung. Books, I take it, like quietness and decorum. Then one morning, when Jane sat down to sew and Aunt Susan to write letters, I repaired to the wood-shed where the boxes stood, my pulses beating as at the going forth to encounter one knows not what dear friend.
And yet I knew what one chief friend I hoped now at last to follow down in the midst of the company he had kept, and touch and hold securely. My scholar-uncle, whose library these books represented, died when I was a little child. I knew him scarcely at all in terms of time or sense, but there has never been any one in the two worlds whom I have loved better. It has been part of the serious business of my mature life to track his fleeing spirit, holding fast by every clue, acting on every hint, that so I may apprehend him at length and know him for that which I joyfully guess. Not an easy pursuit, take it all in all, when death and silence have intervened to help a soul already sufficiently fugitive in itself; I have often been sorely baffled. Whither is the sweet mocker away that he never will wait to let me catch up with him? Does he not know that we needs must love each other?
The portrait helped me wonderfully, turning up quite as a revelation among our things at Dorset. I had lived with it as a child, to be sure, but the eyes of youth are undiscerning; I had never realized what an excellent work it was. Aunt Susan and I unboxed it together, then we stood back and looked in silence. The grave and gentle young face of long ago smiled quietly out at us—blue eyes transfused with an inner light of wistfulness and humor, oddly sad and whimsical at a glance, a firm sweet mouth, and a dreaming forehead. Over the features played the touch, vanishing, elusive, that was life itself, fragile as a star-ray, persistent as the hills. My very uncle, caught, arrested, when he knew it not, when he would most have taken his leave, being most himself, fixed there for the world to love—what a tender and beautiful kind of joke! I wonder if the painter knew the fineness of his triumph, and if he chuckled to himself— "Ah-ha, there, trapped, thou fleeing one!" I should like to thank him for his great service, but he too has now taken advantage of death. We hung the picture—Aunt Susan and I— over one of the bookcases in the library, where we can most frequently be in its presence; and, when the afternoon sun strikes through the orchard window, the thoughtful face lights suddenly up and the blue eyes laugh outright.
With my uncle's books, as with his portrait, I had been long familiar. But here again I must plead the ignorance of youth. I remembered, indeed, that we owned the Waverley Novels and Lorna Doone, an illustrated Lives of the Saints adapted for Sunday beguilement, a Pilgrim's Progress, a Household Book of Poetry, and many tales of heterogeneous association; but, beyond this limited assurance, I had no knowledge of what might lie awaiting me in the boxes. It was with a double excitement that I fared forth on my task of unpacking. I was going to find my uncle because I was going to find dear mutual friends hand in hand with him who would help to make him known. Since the early days when I had last seen this library, I had come to believe that there is nothing in all the world quite so good as a good book.
The doors of the wood-shed stood wide to the sunny lawn at the edge of the orchard, the birds flew singing by. It was early June now, and the world's chalice was brimming. Even so brimmed at my feet the separate chalices of the lives of the best of men, waiting only for me to lift and quaff. What a day I had before me!
I began on the nearest box, at random, trusting my stars as usual. At once I discovered that the book-packer's method, whatever may be said for it from the point of view of expediency, respects not persons at all. As if one should settle a town by height—all six foot people in this street, all five foot nine in that—so these boxes had been filled according to size of volume, relevancy of subjectmatter being quite ignored. The result was somewhat bewildering to the investigating eye, but I am not sure that the confusion did not lend its own particular zest to the excitement of the occasion. All was surprise, when essays, novels, books of poetry, books of science lay side by side indiscriminately, and one could not possibly foretell what the next dive of the eager hand might bring forth.
My uncle surely was aware of what was going forward; he lent himself to the spirit game of hide-and-seek with his usual vanishing quickness. Almost caught, never held! Ah, come now, dear, it is no laughing matter! At first he encouraged me immensely, flattered me with unlooked-for hope of an instant union, came and sat on the box beside me and said, "See here, and here!" Emerson, Browning, Hazlitt, Thoreau, Lamb, Wordsworth—with one accord they sprang up and bade us join our hands and love each other always. It almost took my breath away. I was sure of him now. I held him, sitting down on the floor with his battered Emerson in my hand, reading after him. All my favorite passages he had marked; in the margin were comments written to which I cried Amen. I had him, I had him; he was here, waiting for me between the leaves of the book which we both loved. It was only because no meaner place was fit for the tarrying of his spirit that he had evaded me so long. I looked up, glowing, and my glance fell on a serried rank of books in an adjacent box; uniform, these, because one set—Prescott's histories! Well, it was funny to observe how flat my spirits fell. Even I thought it was funny, and smiled. As for my uncle, I heard his spirit laughter ring as clear as the song of the oriole in the orchard. I got up slowly, laying aside the kindly volumes whc had thought to make my way so easy, and went and examined the history books. A whole solid box of them, on my word! Prescott and Gibbon and Milman and Hume and all the dreary old fellows whom I have never been able to read. My uncle had read them; here were his marks and his comments running along the margins in his fine scholarly hand, denoting his thoughtful interest. But I—alas! —no, it was no use. I saw my beautiful, hunted spirit, so nearly encountered in Emerson's grove, retreating now along the broad way of a dusty highroad whither I might not follow, and I knew he was lost again.
The counter-check was useful in that it brought me down to the work immediately at hand. The morning was going, and the shelves in the library were a-gape. Accepting my failure—not forgetting, either, my first success—I gathered the books in armfuls and carried them through to the front of the house, assorting them and depositing them in piles on the library floor. My uncle flashed joyously out at me once from an old volume of Keats. That was a full-face encounter, be sure, a clear straight shining from eye to eye, convincing, penetrating. I averted my glance from the history pile for some time after that.
The task of classification and arrangement was by no means a simple one. I had not realized that there would be so many subtle considerations to be borne in mind. The great and generous souls with whom I was dealing presented no claims of any kind, but their very reticence put me on my mettle of honor to do my best by them.
To begin with, there was the broad division into the two rooms, north and south. The north room is the library proper. My uncle's picture hangs there, and there stand five of the big bookcases. The windows look out into the orchard, and the light is cool and shaded. A very fit room, take it all in all, for the grave presence of books. But the south room is attractive too. The sunlight streams in at its windows, and the green lawn with flaunting flower-beds offers a cheery outlook to the color-loving eye. To this latter room I consigned the French books with no hesitation, and also, after only some slight consideration, the books on art. But just here— in arranging the art bookcase—I made my first mistake. Ruskin is one of my chief favorites in the world of letters, one of my prophets, I may say. My uncle loves him too, and deigned to make Modern Painters a resting-point from which to look back and lure me on in my pursuit of him. Not for anything in the world would I have failed to meet the wishes of the great writer concerning his dwelling-place with us. I considered the matter carefully. Ruskin was a teacher, I decided, a teacher of no less a subject than life itself; he belonged among the philosophers and essayists, rank by rank with Emerson, Plato, Marcus Aurelius. Accordingly, I gave him a place of honor in the corner bookcase in the library, where the essayists stand. It is curious how you feel at once a person's state of mind. I knew that something was not quite right before I had even finished putting the volumes upon the shelf. It would be impious to say that Ruskin sulked; but at least he was not happy, something was on his mind. I pondered and deliberated, and at last it flashed upon me—I am sure I do not know how—that the great man thought he belonged, not in the essay bookcase at all, but at the head of the bookcase of art in the other room. The change was not a promotion in my eyes, but, since he would have it so, I obeyed, and at once the volumes fell into place with a happy air of authority; all was well with Ruskin.
With Carlyle also I had difficulties manifold and tedious. This fiery scribe goes clad with us most appropriately in a burning red; and, wherever I left him, he set up warfare with all sorts of harmless pink and magenta books of the minor poetry and novel order. His place was not quite ready for him in the essay bookcase; I did think he might have a little patience and trust me for his final disposal. But no, he would not wait a minute. No sooner had I rescued a shivering, livid pink novelette from his overbearing presence, and turned about some other task, than, out of the tail of my eye, I saw him at it again, vexing himself purple in the face over some salmon poetry. There was nothing for it finally but that I should drop everything else and put the fierce volumes where they belonged, on the shelf by the dark green Emerson. Immediately what a transformation! Ah, Emerson, friend of his soul! There were no more lurid glarings now, but an instant out-shining of genial light, warm, harmonious as you please, and, as with Ruskin a short time ago, so now all was well with Carlyle.
I was turning away from this happy consummation, when I caught a curious, whimsical protest proceeding from the upper shelf of the bookcase beside me. The tone was apologetic, laughing: i "Of course it's an interesting situation, and therefore I can stand it; but really you know—!"
It was Cervantes speaking, and he was glancing sideways, with comical, appealing despair, at a rigid volume of Jonathan Edwards which flanked him uncompromisingly. Would never have made any trouble about it, preserved his native complexion unchanged; but really—! It was in truth a delightful situation. I am afraid I prolonged it a little for the sake of my own enjoyment, glancing from one to the other of the two uncongenial neighbors, the one so stiff, the other so debonair, both so ready to be gone. Then I carried Jonathan Edwards away into another room, leaving a place which has since been filled by The Gentle Reader. - *: ,
My uncle made another of his altogether incalculable appearances in connection with this latter incident. Quite gravely he stood before me, as I was about to thrust the volume of sermons somewhat unthinkingly away, and bade me hold and beware. "Cervantes does all very well," he assured me; "you do right to consider him. But do not scorn Jonathan Edwards, my child. He was a great good man." I liked the note of authority in my uncle's voice, even though his admonition opened out new spirit-miles before me; and, with great respect, I found a place of rank and consideration for his stern old preacher friend.
It will be seen that I was trying to be very conscientious in this whole matter of dealing with my uncle's library, to remember always that it was his, not mine. One of my gravest problems was the appropriation of the bookcase of honor beneath his portrait.
"Aunt Susan," I asked, emerging for counsel from the elected solitude of my task, "in what department of the library did my uncle take most pride?"
Aunt Susan looked up from her writing, and considered a moment.
"The histories, I think, on the whole," she answered with an air of conviction.
Might I not have known this would be the reply? I smiled, to establish my appreciation of the jest in the eyes of all on-lookers; then I returned to the library and firmly arranged the histories, row on row, in that case which I coveted for the essayists. My uncle's eyes beamed into mine every time I looked up from my determined concession, and his face was more tender than whimsical; he was touched I think. As for the histories, I must say they made a fine show for themselves. Bound for the most part in reds and browns, leatherbacked, with gold tooling, they filled the bookcase impressively, and formed a fit setting of dignity for the thoughtful face above them. Were it not that I make a loyal distinction between love of books and backgammon-board appreciation, I should honor the histories. I do honor them for my uncle's sake. Perhaps some day I shall read them.
It is needless to say that all this work of arrangement occupied many days, days of a musing absorption and pleasure which I shall not soon forget. I did not hurry; I would not lose one happy experience. There was hardly an hour, half-hour, say, when I did not drop down on the floor with some newly-discovered dear book in my hand, and give myself over to the spell of the master there abiding. I often caught my uncle thus, fleeing through the pages, surprised on some much pondered paragraph where he had bemused himself, taking sudden flight on my coming, but leaving his trail blazed for me. I should have him yet, the mocker! I soon discovered that the two writers in whose books I was most certain of finding him were Emerson and Wordsworth, and I haunted their pages expectantly.What higher use can a book subserve than to be a rendezvous of souls?
When at last all was in order, every rearrangement made, and as perfect a harmony established as can prevail in such a diverse multitude, I stood and realized my riches, deeply gratified. There were some rare and valuable books here, books which my uncle's slender purse and thoughtful scholar's taste would hardly have let him buy, but which good friends had bestowed on him. Resplendent volumes of Lacroix's Middle Ages, a curious description of the Rosetta Stone, Moore's poems in an exquisite setting over which I fairly held my breath, fine collections of engravings, a black-letter Wycliffe Bible—excellent treasures, these, and others, filling the bookcase in the south room where Ruskin held happy sway. I admired them truly, knowing yet that it was not before them that my feet would pause oftenest in the days to come.
When I am banished to my desert island, it will probably be the poetry bookcase which I shall take with me. There are more than ten volumes here, to be sure, but I can never bring my mind to the ungracious supposition of meager designs on the part of bountiful Providence which the popular book-review fancy delights in. One hundred volumes is the last limitation which I can consent to tax heaven withal. The poetry books, from Shakespeare down, have my reasonable preference over all the others in the house. The highest of all human thinking is here, the very quintessence of life.
And yet again the floor, though worn before the poetry bookcase, will always have another spot more marred.
When I enter the library now, after an absence of any length, it is to the odd little corner bookcase where the essays stand that my eyes instinctively turn for greeting. All there, my hearties? Then all is well. The assortment here is the least creditable, from a book-collector's point of view, of any the house contains. Odd, ragged volumes, mismated, despoiled, vagabonds of the shelf, merry survivors of statelier times when the garments were at least stiff and new which now hang about them so recklessly, they look out into the room with a certain disreputable good-cheer which is quite irresistible. Their demoralization is completed by the fact that there is never a time when some two or three of them are not leaning confidingly across space to take advantage of the temporary absence of a next neighbor and have a chat with a next neighbor but one. Dear comrades! they pour me the wine of life—better, the golden sunlight—from the chalices of their names. Malory, Cervantes, Montaigne, Walton, Bunyan, Addison, Goldsmith, Lamb, Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, Holmes, Stevenson, Crothers, Henderson—is it not enough to name them over to feel the heart refreshed? There is hardly a doubt of the worth of life which their bookcase cannot settle.
The old house received the old books with its usual wise tranquillity. But their coming must have been an event far more stirring to it than the arrival of Aunt Susan and Jane and me. It had sheltered many people before, it knew them through and through; I suppose it had never in all its days seen a library like my uncle's. I like to muse on the perfect fitness of the intercourse thus established. How, in the dead of night, they must confer together, and in the long, cold winter when we go away and leave them! Doubtless, if the house were questioned as to its inhabitants, it would begin exultantly, " Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan," and one would have to wait a long time before hearing a word about Aunt Susan and Jane and me. But I think we should not resent this.
"Come, uncle," I said appealingly, when all was done and I sat down by the window; "come, meet me here among your books, there could be no better place. Come, live with me, and we will read all the day long together. Emerson, Wordsworth"
Here my glance, turning to seek my uncle's face, encountered the top row of history books, and I stopped suddenly. It was late in the afternoon, the sun was streaming down the orchard hill, a long ray stole through the library window, and my uncle's eyes laughed out. But he did not say me nay.
Excerpt from Humphrey, Zephine, Over Against Green Peak, Henry Holt and Company, 1909